\n<\/p>\n
Miguel Mart\u00ednez was not entirely sure how to react. On Monday evening, he found himself standing outside a bar in Bilbao, tuning in and out of his colleagues\u2019 conversation, his eyes fixed on a television screen inside. He has been avidly tracking Spain\u2019s progress in the European soccer championship, he said, and a work trip was not going to get in the way.<\/p>\n
He had watched the country\u2019s first two games with his 13-year-old son, back home in Seville. The city, he said, has caught a severe dose of major tournament fever, a condition that reliably sweeps across Europe on a biennial basis. Balconies are decorated with Spanish flags. The streets are alive with Spanish jerseys. Spain\u2019s wins have prompted wild celebrations.<\/p>\n
As far as Mr. Mart\u00ednez could tell, though, Bilbao was somehow immune. There were plenty of flags draped from balconies, but they stood for Palestine, or Pride, or, most commonly, the Basque Country itself, in the form of the region\u2019s traditional Ikurri\u00f1a. The Spanish flag flew only from a handful of official buildings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Mart\u00ednez was well aware of why that is. The Basque Country, a mountainous region that presses up against the Bay of Biscay and the Pyrenees in the north of Spain, has long regarded itself as distinct from the rest of the nation. It has its own language, culture and identity. The Basque struggle for autonomy, even independence, has long and bloody roots<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He was keen, then, to be respectful of his hosts, and not cause any offense. When Spain scored early in its third group game, a meeting with Albania, he and his colleagues responded with a brief, muted cheer \u2014 little more than an exhalation, rather than the joyous abandon they might have displayed in Seville.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s probably better to be a little discreet,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how people here feel about the national team.\u201d<\/p>\n For years, his anxiety would have been well placed. Though Spain played its first-ever home game at San Mames, the home stadium of Athletic Club, Bilbao\u2019s fervently supported local team, in 1921<\/a>, the men\u2019s national team has not visited the city since 1967, seemingly an admission that it was not safe ground during the years when ETA, the Basque separatist group, was active.<\/p>\n In 2014, when it was announced that Bilbao would be a candidate to host several games at the 2020 European Championship \u2014 including three demarcated as Spain\u2019s \u201chome\u201d games \u2014 one leading Basque politician suggested such an idea would inevitably conclude with \u201ctanks on the streets<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the end, the coronavirus pandemic meant that Bilbao was removed from hosting duties \u2014 it was replaced by Seville \u2014 when the delayed tournament eventually took place.<\/p>\n The suspicion lingered that switching the location for more amenable territory was a relief for the authorities: Athletic\u2019s fans habitually<\/a> jeer the Spanish national anthem<\/a>, after all. And Andoni Ortuzar, the leader of the Basque Nationalist Party, said during the tournament that he wanted England<\/a>, rather than Spain, to win.<\/p>\n On the surface, little has changed this year. This month, Aitor Esteban, one of Mr. Ortuzar\u2019s colleagues, admitted he would not support<\/a> Spain during Euro 2024. \u201cMy team is the Basque one, not the Spanish one,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I am a supporter, it will be for someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The absence of Spanish flags and jerseys on the streets of Bilbao would seem to suggest that plenty of others are of the same view. \u201cFor the majority of the Basque media, what happens to the Spanish national team is news, but they don\u2019t follow it with any particular enthusiasm,\u201d said Joseba Agirreazkuenaga, a professor in the history of the Basque Country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n (A glimpse at the newsstands the day after Spain\u2019s defeat of Albania bore out this assessment: Spain\u2019s national newspapers had the victory front and center. Most of their Basque counterparts mentioned it only in passing.)<\/p>\n To I\u00f1aki \u00c1lvarez, though, playing soccer with his nephews on the Plaza Nueva in the heart of Bilbao\u2019s cobbled old town, things are different. \u201cIt was more complicated 20 years ago,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are people who support them. There are people who don\u2019t. And there are people who don\u2019t care. But before you wouldn\u2019t see anyone in a Spain jersey in Bilbao. Now, there are not many, but if you do, it\u2019s fine. It\u2019s much calmer than it used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n The fact that Mr. Mart\u00ednez, for example, easily found a bar showing the Spain game was proof of that.<\/p>\n In 2008, the (possibly apocryphal) story goes, only one bar in Bilbao had a big screen showing Spain\u2019s meeting with Germany in the final of that year\u2019s European Championship: Ein Prosit, a German-themed cafe a few paces from Plaza Moyua. It was allowed to show the game, the story goes, on the tacit understanding that everyone involved wanted Germany to win.<\/p>\n Now, Mr. Mart\u00ednez and his colleagues had a choice of half a dozen locales on Licenciado de Pozo, a street running from the city center to San Mames, along with many more in the old town.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Dani \u00c1lvarez \u2014 no relation to I\u00f1aki \u2014 works as the head of the news service at Radio Euskadi, the Basque public broadcaster. He said that change was largely testament to a series of slow-moving, tectonic shifts in Basque culture.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a legacy of the years of horror we endured that has made the Basque Country very welcoming, very tolerant,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the same time, there is a digital generation that has grown up without ETA being active, who do not understand why their parents or grandparents want Spain to lose. They now live quite naturally with a dual identity: It is perfectly easy for them to think of being both Basque and Spanish.\u201d<\/p>\n But it might also, he admitted, be related to the distinctly Basque feel to the current iteration of the Spanish team. The region\u2019s two major clubs, Athletic and Real Sociedad, based in San Seb\u00e1stian, have always supplied a considerable number of players for the national side, but this year\u2019s crop is especially rich.<\/p>\n Eight of the 26 players<\/a> representing Spain in the tournament have roots either in Euskadi \u2014 the administrative conception of the Basque Country \u2014 or Euskal Herria, the slightly larger Basque spiritual homeland. (A ninth, Robin Le Normand, was born in France, but plays for Real Sociedad.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The coach, Luis de la Fuente, is from the neighboring province of La Rioja, but is Basque in a soccer sense: He spent 11 years of his playing career at Athletic, a club that even now still fields only Basque players<\/a>. That connection, Mr. \u00c1lvarez said, has made it harder for fans not to want at least some parts of the Spanish side to fare well this summer.<\/p>\n \u201cPlayers like Unai Simon and Nico Williams are not just part of the team, they are the leaders of it,\u201d he said, referencing two Athletic stars. \u201cThey are references for Basque soccer. Their success helps bring international renown to Athletic, to Bilbao. So why would you be against a team that is full of players you love?\u201d<\/p>\n Quite how far that sentiment goes, though, is not clear. Mr. Mart\u00ednez and his colleagues did not face any opprobrium for their tactful celebration of Spain\u2019s goal, but nor was there any raucous jubilation at the outcome of the game. \u201cThere are people who want Spain to win, of course,\u201d Mr. \u00c1lvarez said. \u201cBut maybe it is a more private thing.\u201d<\/p>\n A few minutes after the Spain-Albania game finished, sending Spain through to a round of 16 match on Sunday, a genuinely raucous cheer rang around the old town: the sort of unrestrained delight that tends to indicate someone, somewhere, has come down with major tournament fever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The outbreak was quickly sourced to a bar with a screen tuned to the evening\u2019s other game, Italy\u2019s meeting with Croatia. Italy had scored a last-minute equalizer, securing its place in the next round. The group of Italians who had crowded around the screens to watch did not have any hesitation letting everyone know how happy they were.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n